Gorak Shep, Nepal
9pm
I can not write for long tonight only to scribble out a few lines.
We left Lobuche early yesterday morning and climbed and scrambled over thousands of boulders to our highest village Gorek (meaning raven in Sherpa) Shep. After we arrived in the late morning the skies were nice and blue and clear so we threw everything out of our day packs except for a wind jacket and water and began our two and a half hour straight up (50 degree angle) to the summit of Kalapathar. I'll have to go into more detail later but all I can say is I was literally on clouds up at 18,500 feet! We made the summit! I am so so happy! I must admit that it was one of the hardest physical things I have ever done to make it to that summit! When I reached the top it was like "I'm here! I can't believe I made it! I summited!" It was my equivalent of a Everest Summit! I honestly did not think that I would be able to make it to the top of Kalapathar when we left SLC (I wasn't sure if I would make Base Camp), but with every step closer to that spot, I felt myself growing more and more confident that I could really do this!
When my days get tough, I tell myself in my head "you can do this. You can do this!" Over and over I would repeat my mantra. Yesterday it got me to this amazing goal! I feel so much more confidence in myself that if I put my mind to it, I can do anything! The past couple of days have been wonderful! In so many ways this trip has already changed my life so much.
This is possibly the highest spot on earth that my feet will ever sit on (except now that I have done this... I am thinking maybe we should attempt Kilimanjaro in Africa! It is only 1000 feet higher!)! The skies were clear and gave us beautiful views of Everest! The summit was so windy! You could see Everest to the left and look all the way down where we had just come all the way to the end of the gigantic Khumbu Glacier to the right. Lhaptka brought a nalgene full of hot water that we sipped on at the summit to keep out core temperature warm! It was delicious up there overlooking the Himalayas the wind speeding by us!
Yesterday I stood at 18,400 feet, today I stood at 17,500 feet at the end of our ascent up to Everest Base Camp! I am very proud today that I made both of my goals! This is amazing! The altitude has proved a great challenge but not a challenge that I could not overcome with the full assistance of the my high altitude medication! I am sure that I would not have made it here without it! So I got a rash and had a nasty allergic reaction! who cares!? I made it! It was more that worth it! Today we walked on a glacier, ate lunch and hung out with climbers getting ready to climb to the highest point in the world; some were scientists, others were adventurers ready to test their luck and skills on an unforgiving mountain. While others were simply trying to break their own world record. All here driven by some unknown desire to be one with the mountain! What an incredible day! Base camp is a tent city that is bathed in blue light reflecting off of all the ice from the glacier and the ice fall. It was surreal! I tried to remain calm on the outside, but on the inside I had a huge smile. It may be no Everest summit, but I made it!! I am at Everest Base Camp! I was so thrilled! After staying at Base Camp for three hours, frozen to the bones (I forgot to bring my puffy North Face coat! How stupid was that!), we began to make the long three hour walk back to Gorak Shep. Then it started to snow! yeah
John became sick on the way back from Base Camp. His lips and face turned a deep color of purple. It became really scary! He could hardly walk, he stumbled over every step; he seemed really out of it and kept telling me he had a headache! As you can imagine I got really concerned. Remember what I wrote about AMS! I began to get nervous! We finally made it back to Gorak Shep and John practically fell into bed. After much discussion with Lhaptka, we are thinking it is probably exhaustion and not AMS. If it were AMS he would haven had a problem yesterday when we hit our highest altitude not today. Even still, we are on watch in case he gets dramatically worse and we have to pick up and head down to a lower altitude tonight. So I am trying to play nurse maid at 17,000 feet. We begin our descent first thing tomorrow. We hope that this helps!
good night
Images from Kalapathar
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